Adels diner is on the Corner of College and Mendicino. I imagine it has been there for a long, long time. Adels style is distinctively American, the style for diners forged, I lovingly imagine, in the post-war years of winged cars and before the sexual revolution.
The decor is red and chrome. The place is long and thin, the diners arrayed on stools before a long, laminex counter overlooking the short-order cooks, or perhaps they prefer to be seated in booths, each of which is comprised of two vinyl bench seats across a table that is fixed in place. The waitresses are young, zaftig, crudely but meticulously made up, and very much of a "style"; the style is probably Adel's taste. Adels is always open, if it closes I have not been there at that time anyway. The menu is "complete", covering full meals, sandwiches, breakfasts from cereal to eggs and steak, snacks... you name it, if we can fry it or it comes out of a packet, you got it. It may be wishful thinking, but I'd swear it smells the same as a cheap paperback, a sort of musty, dog-eared, papery smell, although it is scrupulously clean, right down to the plastic fuschias. Dashiel Hammett plotted in places like Adels.
The food is like the atmosphere: Opulent in a tacky sort of way. The servings are generous, the quality is reliable. To us foreigners it could seem imaginative, the pre-cooked mince in the scrambled eggs, spinach as part of breakfast, the single slice of orange on iceberg lettuce and carrot salad, but it is truly mundane to Adel: He caters to the "man in the street". This isn't culinary excellence, but it is a damn good feed. The coffee is bottomless as well as tasteless, but who cares?
You cannot give Adels a score, any more than you can rate TV programs like My Three Sons, they just have their place in history, and you have to be there at least once in a lifetime.